


Well, I say friend...

by JanecShannon



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Drugs, Gen, Oh God John, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-08-03
Updated: 2012-08-23
Packaged: 2017-11-11 08:35:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/476647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JanecShannon/pseuds/JanecShannon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The skull is really John's skull. (Not as in it belongs to John, as in it is John)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“Sh-Sherl-lo-” John chokes each breath, a small dribble of blood leaking from the corner of his mouth. 

“Focus on your breathing, John. I need you to keep breathing and stay awake,” Sherlock orders back. 

“ ‘m sorry.”

“As well you should be,” Sherlock scolds distractedly. “Going and getting yourself stabbed, what _were_ you thinking?”

“Wasn’t,” John answers. Half joking to give himself the tether of this one piece of normalcy. Half trying to soften the blow they both already know is coming. 

“The ambulance will be here soon,” Sherlock promises but it's a moot point. His hands are stained with the lifeblood he’s trying get to stay _inside_ the breaking body before him... But (though Sherlock tries to deny what he knows to be the truth for possibly the first time in his life) even if the ambulance were to arrive to find a breathing, conscious John there is nothing they would be able to do.

The wound is fatal.

“Bes’ Fr’nd...” John’s speech is slurring and Sherlock’s vision is inexplicably blurring. Neither notice the arrival of Lestrade and his team. 

“ _John._ ” It’s a plea the other man can’t answer. A plea to stay. A plea not to leave Sherlock to the lonely, friendless life he had before. 

“Goo’ man, Sh’lock.” Sherlock can only shake his head because he _isn’t_ a good man. John is the good man, he just seems to make everyone around him better. Sherlock more so than most but then, Sherlock has further to go than most so that makes sense. 

John’s eyes, which have been slightly unfocused up to this point, looking Sherlock’s direction but not quite _seeing_ him suddenly lock on. Focused, bright, and clear for just a brief moment as he mutters, “ ‘m proud of you, Sherlock.”

But then John’s muscles go slack and his gaze is empty and unfocused somewhere to the left. And Sherlock suddenly feels cold, which is odd because John’s the one that lost all the blood, and the world feels like it’s got mufflers on and his head feels like it’s filled with cotton. 

And John breathed out but he hasn’t breathed back in yet. Why hasn’t he inhaled? John needs to breath. He needs air. John’s not breathing! Why isn’t John breathing?! _John!_

Sherlock realized belatedly that he must have spoken at least some of that out loud, because there are hands on him and a kind voice saying, “He’s gone, Sherlock.” Much later, Sherlock will be glad he wasn’t so out of it as to ask _Gone where?_ but for now, all he’s capable of is staring at Lestrade and shivering. 

Then there’s a burning hand on his forehead and then his neck and Lestrade hisses angrily, “Damnit, he’s in shock!” And then there’s a blanket and Sherlock isn’t quite so cold but the world itself is still freezing. 

And John still isn’t breathing. 

They try to move Sherlock away, but he refuses to budge until John tells him to go. Eventually someone puts John on a stretcher, but when they try to zip the black bag closed... something in Sherlock snaps. 

Later he won’t be entirely certain what happened. He just knows that somehow Lestrade ends up with a black eye, Sally Donovan has a split lip, and he has a small pin prick on his neck. The next thing he knows he’s waking up (washed clean of John’s blood) in his bedroom to the sound of Lestrade’s murmuring and Mrs. Hudson’s quiet crying. 

(And, although he isn’t around for it later... Sally Donovan never calls him a Freak again and even becomes known to defend him against those that do).

Sherlock himself is no longer in shock but that doesn’t seem to have stopped the tight feeling in his chest and the odd sense of utter _Wrongness_ throughout the flat. He wonders if this is what grief feels like and decides it isn’t pleasant. 

At some point, there is a drunk sister. At first full of anger and accusations but eventually sobering up and seeming to realize that Sherlock was all John’d had, all he’d needed. Sherlock realizes she must have heard the tale from Lestrade’s team (or possibly Mycroft’s) because she tells him that she’s glad he got to go happy: Sorry to go so soon, but not sorry where his life had taken him. 

For the most part, Sherlock barely acknowledges the woman, too caught up in catching John’s murderer, but he does give her a small smile when he is given the position of Chief Mourner at the funeral (there is a dark haired woman holding Harry, she gives Sherlock an understanding look and leads John’s sister away. _Clara_ , Sherlock deduces). If people treat him like a mourning widow instead of a best friend or flatmate... Well, Sherlock can’t bring himself to care. They are not John so they’re opinions don’t matter... And even John had given up correcting people years before. 

There are a number of people at the funeral who catch his attention, only vaguely interesting for that they knew John. A surprising number of those that come are in formal army clothes, Sherlock wouldn’t have thought (if he’d bothered to put any thought into it) that they couldn’t have gotten leave to come back, but even Mycroft and his nameless PA stand in the crowd honoring the fallen ex-army doctor and Sherlock attributes their presence to that. 

As much as he wants to sneer at the interference and snarl that he just wants to be left alone, Sherlock is perfectly aware that funerals are more for the living. And, even if John himself will never know it, the rest of the world should know how important this ordinary seeming, unassuming man was. How greatly he will be missed. 

So instead he meets his brother’s eye and neither says nor does anything about it. 

The get together afterwards is held in 221A because 221B would barely have been acceptable when John was alive to take care of it and at this point, he’s been dead a week. Sherlock’s strange possessiveness of the flat and John’s little bedroom upstairs doesn’t help matters, he glares at almost everyone who ventures through the door to the flat and physically throws out anyone who dares approach John’s room. (But this _is_ Sherlock so maybe it isn’t so strange or unexpected after all). 

And when the funeral is over and the fridges of 221A and B have never been so full of food and Sherlock has caught John’s killer... He’s left alone for the first time in the week since John’s death.

He crouches in his chair, his gaze unable to settle for long.... John’s chair (with the tartan throw over the back), the kitchen (the kettle in particular), John’s cane (pulled out while Sherlock had been “dead” for those three long years, then shoved in a corner and forgotten about upon his return), and finally on the skull on the mantel. 

For some reason, the skull gives him pause. He tries to remember where he had gotten it, but the memory is half-deleted and half never-quite remembered in the first place (because of his drug-addled mind at the time). 

It (or he, more of, because the skull was definitely male) was important, Sherlock knew that. Something had managed to ingrain that into him years ago. During a time when possessions had little value to him (most things still didn’t mean much) and were often missing when he woke up (now they usually break before they have the chance to go missing) the skull had remained safe. Heaven help the poor sod who crossed Sherlock Holmes and took his skull.

A real human skull fetches about two thousand pounds on the black market and this was a good skull. Male, approximately 41 when he’d died. Caucasian, most likely British but there were signs of Scottish blood in his ancestry. Died just over 700 years ago. He’d been healthy which was wholly uncommon for the time. He was a rarity, this John Doe of his (Sherlock had stopped calling him John when John Watson moved in).

 

A rarity and, perhaps, a bit of a puzzle but that wasn’t where this sense of importance came from. Sherlock stood and ran the pads of his fingers over the cool bone. He frowned when a wave of recognition washed over him.

Sherlock picked the skull up and turned to look at the healed wound. A bullet graze? From someone that lived during the middle ages? That couldn’t be right... had he guessed the skulls age wrong? But no, this skull was definitely 700 years old (give or take a hundred years or so). 

And what a coincidence that John (Watson, not Doe) had a scar in the same place from when a sniper managed a hit just a little too close for comfort. And this small indent above the right eye, John (Watson) had that too from where he’d accidentally slammed his head into the corner of a coffee table when he’d been a child and Harry had been babysitting him (poorly). He ran his hands over the smooth bone and tried to reconstruct the face in his mind. 

Slowly bone, muscles, skin, eyes and hair... it was John Watson’s and John Doe’s face that was constructed in his mind. They were one and the same... Sherlock’s John Doe was his John Watson. 

“What were you doing alive in the middle ages, John?” he wondered out loud. 

And then another memory, uncovered from where it was long buried, of detoxing in Mycroft’s home. Of only being allowed to keep the skull because it seemed to calm him fractionally and keep him from struggling as much. Of secreting away... _something_... that Mycroft could never be allowed to find. 

Sherlock needed to know what that was. 

x-x-x-x-x-x

Breaking in is too easy but Sherlock doesn’t care. He’s already tearing the room by the time Mycroft walks in.

“Really, Sherlock, I’m disappointed,” he stated in a far too dramatic voice. 

“Why?”

“Well for one thing, there are better places to look for drugs than a room specifically designed to keep you from getting high.“

“I hid something here years ago. _Did you find it?_ ” Sherlock asks urgently, because this is too important. 

Mycroft’s eyes take on the tiniest tinge of sadness as he answers, “I will not give you drugs, brother mine.”

But his words only cause Sherlock relief, because that is most certainly not his aim. “Then you _didn’t_ find where I hid it,” he pauses and glances around the room, “Now if only _I_ knew where I hid it.”

“Sherlock-”

“Shut up!” the younger Homles snarls and looks around the room desperately before, _finally_ , something catches his eye. 

There. 

He picks up the John’s skull and makes his way over to the piece of moulding. He’d carved two or three up but specifically avoided this one. Avoided bringing any attention to it. His fingernails hurt as he peels it away from the wall (Mycroft lets him, probably assuming that he’ll just take whatever Sherlock finds if he deems it dangerous).

But there it is, _they_ are, the time traveller still glowing with that strange blue light and the little book of all his failures. All the times John has died and how he could have prevented them. 

He pulls them out and smiles, they will help him save John. But movement from the corner of his eye catches his attention and he see that Mycroft’s interest has been piqued. He cannot have either of them, though Sherlock knows it is likely only the the time traveller he’s really interested in. His fingers subconsciously grip the small key fob sized object in his hand. 

He stands never letting go of either the skull, the book, or the glowing piece of technology. All three must be passed on to the younger version of himself for this to work. 

“Sherlock,” Mycroft’s voice holds warning but Sherlock calmly walks back to the window, happier than he’s been since John’s death. “What are you doing?”

Sherlock puts one leg out the window and turns to face his brother. “I’m going to find John,” he tells his brother simply and swings his other leg out. 

“No!” Mycroft shouts and lunges for him in a rare show of emotion, but he is already falling the four stories towards the cold earth below him. Sherlock does regret that this is the second time his brother has had to watch him leap to his death but, in his defense, neither times actually ended with death.


	2. Chapter 2

When Sherlock opens his eyes, he is in the rose garden that used to occupy the other side of the house’s grounds. He should have expected this, the notebook tells that the device always returns him to the same time and the same place - _Useless to Mycroft, should he ever get his chubby hands on it,_ is written in a different ink (but still his handwriting) and clearly added in a different cycle. 

He’ll have to manage to sneak off the grounds undetected, now. Eventually, he’ll allow Mycroft to catch him but that cannot happen until he decides to let it. 

It’s hardly difficult but it _is_ irritating. Mycroft had been particularly paranoid around this time, if the signs of a new security system are anything to go by. He doesn’t move for a moment while he considers his next action. He’s hidden for the time being, not well but well enough to fool the idiots his brother employs, but the moment he moves he will draw attention, his dark coat and clothes will not be enough to keep him blended in with the shadows. 

As he crouches in the shadow of the rose bush, he casts his mind deep into the archives of his mind palace. The files are difficult to pull up, here. They’ve been compressed and must be unzipped before he can access the information they contain. Even so, it takes less than a minute to drudge up the necessary files that contain the information for sneaking into and out of this old mansion. 

Once the information is in hand (figuratively), it’s simply a matter of timing as he darts from bush to tree, away from the house and eventually off the grounds entirely. The security tapes will have caught him but he will remain unnoticed unless someone should happen to review them and by then he will be long gone. 

Off the grounds, it is easy to stroll towards some of the less reputable parts of London where he knows he will find his younger self. The time traveller always takes him back to the same time, it is as uncontrollable as its maker, and this time he will make sure he impresses upon himself the utter _necessity_ that he not forget the book this time. Without the book, there is no way to know what to avoid, what to protect John from. He finds the one room flat he had rented around this time and picks the lock easily. 

He flicks the light switch and nearly flinches at the state of the room. The air is stale and stinks with the scent of old cigarette smoke (no doubt emanating from the coffee mug _full_ of old butts) and there is mould growing in one corner of the ceiling where a particularly bad water stain shows on the smoke-yellowed plaster. 

The furniture is sparse. A single mattress that was always too small for him. There are no sheets, just a single blanket and a pillow without a case. No fridge, almost no food at all but a single box of stale Weetabix. 

It is.... worse than he remembers (or perhaps he’s simply gotten used to John’s standard of living). He feels a pang in his chest that he has come to associate with missing John. His blogger would never have allowed him to live like this. Even if it had ever come down to them living in such poor accommodations, John would have cleared the mould, ridded the place of the butts, and made sure there was at least enough food to sustain them both. 

Even when he had been travelling about for those three long years that he was ‘dead’, he hadn’t stayed anywhere as bad as this. Sherlock glances to his side and studies the empty space where his doctor should be. He allows himself this moment of missing, knowing his younger self will not be back to this apartment for several hours at least (if not several days). 

And when his moment of mourning is finished, he settles himself on the slightly rotten floor and waits for himself to return. 

The date is July 19th, 1995. 

Today is his nineteenth birthday and he is about to change his own life forever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the short Chapter, but the next bit is going to be difficult. I've no idea what people on drugs are like nor how to write _Sherlock_ specifically on them. I hate to write thing inaccurately but the only thing of know of them is what I've read in other fics so....
> 
> On an unrelated note... Can someone explain to me what the tag "Freeform" means? I keep seeing it on a bunch of fics but I can't figure out out... "Sherlock - Freeform", "Angst - Freeform".
> 
> Also, what is a remix fic?

**Author's Note:**

> I'm considering writing an epilogue for this... I have no idea how long it will take me to get around to writing it, but I do have an idea for how it will go. 
> 
> If there's enough call for it, I'll make it a priority.


End file.
